Green Beads
by R Reich
Summary: Written before DMC was released. It’s been two years since Jack Sparrow was last in Port Royal, and he’s been doing some thinking.


**Green Beads  
**

It didn't seem like the rain would ever let up. The streets had been churned into mud, and mucky water puddled on the floors of the various taverns, shops, apothecaries and brothels; tracked in by patrons on their boots, dripping from their clothes. The air was chill and damp, and thick with moisture. The upside to the foul weather was that the typical stench that hung over the port of Tortuga was drowned in the crispness the cold, wet wind carried with it.

Captain Jack Sparrow reclined amidst the twist of sweat-damp perfumed sheets, idly toying with the beaded fringe of the rich brocade coverlet that had been pushed aside. As with most things he took a fancy to, what he wanted he got, so he worried at a loose thread with his nail until one of the beaded strings came undone, and the brightly coloured beads tumbled loose into his hand.

The dark-eyed whore who'd spent the evening taking her pleasure with him for a pretty emerald bracelet – some might say an excessive price, but Jack was free with his treasure to the whores who kept him content whilst in port – reached over and lightly slapped his hand. 'Leave et be, Jack,' she said in a sleep-slurred voice that thickened her accent. 'If y'want y'sel' a bead ay'll get y'one in th' mornin'...'

'No need, love,' Jack said, rattling the beads in his hand even as he knotted the thread again to stop it from fraying, 'I've already got me some.'

The whore tsked, but buried her pretty face back into the pillow and was soon lost in the world of Morpheus. Jack plucked one of the glass beads out of his hand and held it up to the candlelight, admiring the rich green colour. It was almost the colour of-

He halted that thought in its tracks, frowning as he considered what he had been about to think. _Almost the colour of Commodore Norrington's eyes_. Now why on Earth would he think something like that, completely unprompted? Take a pause. Those eyes, narrowed at him, scowling, sarcastic, grimly amused, concerned, glazed, despairing, betrayed and never once happy.

Never once bright with good humour and pleasure. It didn't seem fair, really. Even Jack had found an excuse to laugh, and he'd been destined for the gallows the moment he found himself in Norrington's hands after rescuing young Miss Swann – Mrs Turner, now, he supposed.

It had been two years since Jack had fallen off the wall of the fort at Port Royal, and two years since he'd last heard of any of those he had met in his quest to get the _Black Pearl_ back. Oh, letters from Elizabeth and William found him occasionally, but he never read them. It wasn't that he couldn't read – if he couldn't he wouldn't be Captain of the _Pearl_ – it was that he didn't want to feel the inevitable pull that would try to lure him back to the one place where his death was assured. He had no doubt the letters contained not only the trivial doings of life in the English town, but news on Will and Elizabeth's courtship, and why the good Commodore hadn't been hot on his heels the moment he'd hit the water that day two years ago.

The Commodore.

It always came back to him, didn't it? Jack glared at the bead, clenching his fist around it.

Two years, and all he could think of now was a crisp uniform, green eyes and a severe mouth that Jack was sure could soften tenderly. A deep rich voice that sent shivers tingling up his spine and made him wonder what it would be like all husky and rough with lust. Two years with nary a consideration and there he was recalling the Commodore's scent like it was one with the faint hints of sultry, sensual perfume on the silk sheets beneath him.

Jack wondered if he should perhaps return to Port Royal, slip in under the cover of darkness to see Elizabeth and Will, assuage this sudden burning desire to revisit his past – without a run-in with the gallows this time, he promised himself – as if to exorcise the metaphorical demons that haunted him.

Jack Sparrow had no home other than the _Pearl_. He had nowhere he _needed_ to go, he didn't have friends who were (eventually) good, law-abiding citizens, and he _definitely_ didn't lust after a certain naval officer who would see him dancing at the end of a rope before he could explain himself.

He closed his eyes. Maybe he should go back. Just once. Make sure his old friend William "Bootstrap" Turner's only son was doing well outside a life of crime, his last duty of friendship to the man he'd seen as almost a brother. Maybe give Elizabeth that silk fan and sapphire and diamond necklace he'd been holding onto to give to his whore in Martinique. Maybe try and catch a glimpse of the Commodore so as to make himself fully realise that Norrington was just a dangerous man unlike any other, and Jack would be courting both Lady Luck and Death hand-in-hand if he dared to think he could perhaps court the Commodore too.

A gust of cold wind had him suddenly shivering and hitching the blankets up, even as his blood was warm at the images his mind provided him of the Commodore. The curse of an overactive imagination was Jack's, and it didn't take much – the memory of a scent, a green bead for equally green eyes and the sound of glass shattering in another room that reminded him of the sound of a heart breaking – and his body warmed to the thought of having the Commodore beneath him, as sweat-slick as the whore had been earlier, wanting and needing him and _only_ him. He shuddered at the thought.

Come hell or high water, sword or gallows, he'd find himself both a way in to Port Royal visit Will and Elizabeth and a way out to save his battered skin undetected by any naval officer or soldier. He would be as silent as the grave for he was, after all, Captain Jack Sparrow. And no Commodore of the British Royal Navy, no matter how much Jack might lust after him, could hold Captain Jack Sparrow where he did not want to be. This was, Jack suddenly fretted, the crux of the problem.

The chance to seduce Commodore Norrington and thus rid himself of this irrational desire might very well overwhelm common sense and lead him to allow himself to be taken. He grinned helplessly at the line of thought his mind had followed. Taken, indeed.

The grin dropped away, much like the trap had under his feet. No. He could not flirt with Death once more – as a cat had nine lives, so too did Jack – but he was a feared his time might run out before it was due.

No. He could not tempt fickle Fate.

Sighing, Jack rolled over and buried his face in the pillow, not unlike the whore who slept quietly beside him. Come the morning – rain or no – he would gather the crew and turn the _Black Pearl_ to the Caribbee Islands. Word was out that St. Christophe had been claimed by the English – there would be a fine picking of merchantmen carrying rich cargo to replenish the settlement ferrying amongst the Caribbee Islands, and...

His breath caught.

And extensive pirate activity, especially around new or recently claimed settlements, always had the navy up in arms. They would be there in a flash. _He_ would be there. Equal terms, equal footing. A swaying wooden deck beneath his feet and Jack could win himself what he wanted.

_Everything_ he wanted.

Steal the Commodore as well as a nice swag of cargo, deposit him back in Port Royal, whilst taking the time to visit young William and Elizabeth and then he could be out of there, all his desires sated and never needed to be worried about again. An exquisite plan, but for the time needed to carry it off.

Sitting up and reaching for his shirt, Jack Sparrow grinned. He had never been one for patience.


End file.
